You Said Just This Once
by VerelLupin
Summary: *Spoilers for Season 4 Finale. Nick finds out something surprising about his connection to Adalind. Was it meant to be? Can mortal enemies be anything but reluctant allies or will they fall in love and history repeat itself. What makes a Grimm a warrior, what he believes or what he feels? What makes a Hexenbiest a witch, what she was taught or what she feels?


**I really need to stop falling for these impossible ships. They hurt so much...  
**

 **oh the angst of not finding fiction and having to write my own. Hope this helps someone other than me.**

 **Enjoy...I regret nothing.**

* * *

 **'She was pregnant? Adalind was pregnant? With his child?'**

Sure he'd always wanted kids but that was when he dreamed of marrying Juliette and his life was normal.

Before he became a Grimm and knew what a Fuchsbau and Blutbad were, before he had ever heard the word Wesen or seen one Woge. Before Adalind Schade and her Hexenbiest crap had turned his world upside down.

Now the very thought of a child made him feel physically ill, and to find out that she, the architect of his most recent misfortunes, was carrying his child was enough for him to actually consider killing her.

If he did do it, it would have to be personal, without any weapons of any kind, nothing but his bare hands wrapped around that lily white throat, a continuation of their first fight in the forest. Only this time, there would be no remorse and he'd end her for good.

Except the more he thought about it, the more he knew he could never do it.

He couldn't injure her not just because she looked so desperate and pathetic. Not because he was in the office of his boss in the middle of a police station and he was a cop. Not because he was a decent human being or because she was a woman, and Hexenbiest or not she wouldn't be able to defend herself against his brute Grimm strength.

He couldn't because despite all the heartache and trouble she had caused, Adalind was completely and utterly alone in the world. She had no else to turn to and in spite of everything the child was his and it was innocent. It didn't deserve to start its life being hated by one of the very people responsible for its creation and its mother needed to be protected regardless of what he felt for her.

While he had been in this shell shocked state Adalind, had been talking and getting closer to him. He instinctively backed away however once he realized just what exactly she was trying to accomplish. She seemed to stumble for a second but she regained her composure and continued on talking as if he hadn't recoiled from her.

She mention that it was a boy, because apparently she had to know, she mentioned how much he moved. How much it reminded her of him, "he's strong. Like you."

Suddenly she was close enough to grab his hand and he successfully pulled it away but Adalind was strong and she managed to tug it back to her and place it on her distended stomach. His clenched fist relaxed with the first movement. It was sharp and definitive. _It said, "you may not like it but I'm here now. Don't push me away, daddy. I need you, we need you."_

He pulled his hand back and the happy smile melted off her face and it was replaced with a smirk that was all show. **'Adalind Schade, your insecurities are showing.'**

"I'll take you to Rosalee but I can't guarantee she'll want to help."

Of course, Rosalee was more than a little surprised and let's be honest, she took it about as well as anybody could. Adalind had looked appropriately ashamed when confronted with the surprised Fuchsbau, though she still defended herself when Juliette was brought up.

After what seemed like the worst day in history, his night topped it when he finally heard from his ex-fiance.

Juliette had burned down Aunt Marie's trailer. He still couldn't believe it, even faced with the smoking hulking ruin of his family's legacy. But then he was still struggling with Adalind being pregnant and he'd felt her very obvious belly when she'd used him as a shield against Juliette, earlier in the police station.

Monroe and Hank unwilling to let Nick have a breakdown, he assumed he looked ready to crack, had started sifting through the wreckage and began gathering what could be picked up and carried away from the scene without turning to ash. It was all brought to the spice shop and Rosalee had made room in the basement and it was brought down for Nick to discard or salvage.

Wu had a fair amount of books that he'd been digitazing and would be bringing the originals by later on so that they could get a scope of what had survived. It was going to be a lot of work to turn the spice shop basement into his new information headquarters but the busy work would keep him from dwelling on all the seriously messed up aspects of his life.

He'd just started making an inventory of the weapons and cataloging the various degrees of damage on each when he heard the steps on the stairs. "Rosalee, do you have anything to remove slime off of a very burnt battle axe?"

"I'm sure, if she doesn't, she could probably make it in a pinch." Adalind answered.

"What are you doing down here?" he didn't bother to hide his hostility.

"You've been down here for hours. I thought you might be hungry," she replied holding a plate with a very good looking sandwich on it.

"I'm not hungry," he answered and went back to cleaning the burned weapons.

"I didn't make it, if that's what you're worried about. Monroe did. Hank told me to bring it to you if you didn't come up in a few hours. He said you skip a lot of meals."

"Not been very hungry lately."

"Can't say I blame you. I eat because I have to," she patted her belly. "Most of the time I feel like everything is gonna come back up but I have to keep the little guy fed."

"What are you doing?" he asked slamming the knife he was working on into the table.

"Doing?"

"What are you doing?" he repeated. "What are you trying to accomplish with this?"

"Accomplish?"

"Stop repeating everything I say," he yelled.

Adalind placed the plate on the table and stepped back, her hand automatically covering her stomach. "I'm bringing you a sandwich and making polite conversation. I'm trying not to go crazy. I'm trying to pretend that I didn't make the enormous mistake of getting pregnant by a man who hates me. I'm trying to act like it doesn't bother me that everybody hates me and that the only reason I haven't been thrown out on the street like a dog, is because I carry the Grimm's baby."

"Adalind..." he moved towards her but she backed all the way to the stairs.

"Next time your food will wait for you, I wouldn't want to bother you with my presence again."

He didn't get to say anything else as she dashed up the stairs, her shoes clanging with each step in her effort to get away from him as quickly as possible.

He glanced at the sandwich and felt bad, she was pregnant, he shouldn't be yelling at her like that, even if she always managed to find a way to push his buttons. Nick couldn't do that anymore, it wouldn't do for her to make herself or the baby sick just cause he couldn't control his temper.

He grabbed the plate and headed back up the stairs, "Adalind!"

She didn't answer but he knew that she hadn't left. With Juliette and the royal looking for her, she wouldn't risk going out no matter how angry she was at him.

"I can hear perfectly fine. You don't have to shout," she said from her chair.

"I wanted to thank you...for the sandwich," he said.

"I didn't make it. I told you that," she replied.

"I know. Thank you for bringing it down to me. You didn't have to."

"Just trying to be helpful," she said.

"Ok, well I'll be in the basement if you need anything."

"Ok."

"Give me time," he said softly refusing to look in her direction.

"You don't need time. You need for Juliette to get better. Once we get this done and I find Diana, I'll get out of your hair. I promise."

"What about the baby?" He asked.

"You don't owe me anything Nick. I owe you. I'm not gonna tie you to me any more than you already are but if you want to be involved...I'm not against it either."

"Are you sure, you're okay up here by yourself?" He couldn't help asking.

She smiled. "I'll be fine, bored but fine."

"I don't want you climbing down the stairs, its too dangerous but I could bring a few books up to you and you could help sort which ones need to be copied if you're really bored."

"I am very bored, its why I searched you out. Are you sure?"

"Gotta start trusting you with something, right?"

"Right."

She put on some gloves he gave her and carefully she began combing through the three books Nick had brought up. She had mentioned that maybe they should be scanned and he agreed that it would probably be a good idea. Nick wasn't ready to tell her that Wu had already started to do just that.

Nick resumed his work downstairs with the weapons, most of the wooden handles would have to be replaced but the majority of the deadlier tools of the Grimm trade had been spared. He began pulling books to start scanning when the big bold letters of a familiar but broken tome caught his eye.

"Hexenbiest," he read aloud. He picked up the heavily burnt book and carefully inspected it. This once had been near to the door and there was a fresh black boot print on its heavy embossed cover. "Juliette."

Nick skimmed the book but didn't see anything that would have caused the violence against it. "Well I have one guess why she would kick it." Nick said to himself. The book really didn't yield anything else and he would have closed it and forgotten about it had it not been for the single page that had been crumpled and shoved into the spine so hard that it had nearly split it open.

Nick extracted the page, spread it out and found he was face to face with himself.

 _"Daniel Grimm 1875..."_

Nick desperately searched the rest of the page but aside from the drawing of the man that could have easily been his twin the rest of it was torn out. There was some writing on the bottom of the drawing and in neat small letters, letters too small to read without a magnifying glass read. _"killed defending his Hexenbiest bride."_

It been four weeks since he'd found that terrible revelation. Four weeks since Juliette had set a trap and gotten his mother killed and Diana kidnapped by the royals and herself killed by Trubel.

He'd been too horrified to want to find out more about the ancestor who's footsteps he'd been apparently following. The Jack the Ripper investigation had been closed thanks to Hank. Trubel and Wu had taken care of his mother's...remains but there been too many other things to deal with to start digging into the past.

Adalind was in her own place not too far from Bud and Nick checked on her regularly. He'd even offered once for her to stay with him and she'd stammered that neither one of them really wanted that. He'd conceded and let it go but the anxiety of worrying about her and the baby was welcome in comparison to the crippling depression that had taken over him with Juliette's death.

Trubel had stuck around for the first week but she'd told him soon after that she needed to check on Josh and Nick had urged her to go, he didn't need anybody else watching over him. He already had Hank, Wu, Rosalee and Monroe for that job, even the captain asked him if he was okay at least once throughout the week.

But Nick didn't want to deal with anything that had happened in the last few weeks. He just wanted to go back to his police work and the occasional wesen case and now that he'd gotten back some normality, that page he'd found and hidden was pushing through the haze.

 _'Killed defending his Hexenbiest bride'_

That's all Daniel Grimm's life had come down to, he'd been killed protecting the woman he loved, a woman who was a wesen and one of his mortal enemies. Nick stared at the page in his hand, put it back in his pocket and knocked lightly on the door. If anybody knew anything about this, Adalind had to be it.

Adalind answered right away, her belly big and ready to pop at any moment. "Nick, I didn't expect to see you until Friday. Is there something wrong?"

Nick said no but he was actually studying her. She was still unnaturally beautiful and this pregnancy unlike the last one had really softened her up. Her eyes didn't seem so menacing or conniving and her smile actually looked real and unlike the ever present lift of lips that he saw on her. He could almost understand why any man would be attracted to a woman like her, but love...that was still too much given his particular history.

"Nick?"

"Hexenbiests and Grimms have always been mortal enemies haven't they?" he asked instead.

"Um...as far as I know," she said and backed up to allow him to enter and closed the door quietly behind her. He stepped into her living room and immediately began pacing.

"Why did you let me in?" he asked turning and facing her.

"I'm pregnant, heavily so. I can't really run and if you really want to hurt me, I would have to conserve my strength to fight you off," she answered and sat down. "What's going on?"

"Remember when we salvaged all the stuff from my Aunt Marie's trailer?"

She nodded.

"A lot of the books were destroyed but we managed to save a few."

"I know, I helped, remember?"

Nick began pacing again, "there was a book on Hexenbiests."

"So?"

His pacing became more frantic as he talked, "you don't understand. Most of the books we had, had all wesen in them. This book was only about Hexenbiests."

"We are the most powerful wesen, its not surprising that Grimms would keep a record of us, separately."

"Has there ever been a mix between any wesen and Grimms?" he asked still pacing.

"Besides us, you mean." Adalind sighed, "there's always been rumors but mostly it just embellishment to make the wesen in question seem more dangerous."

"A defense mechanism."

"You could call it that."

He stopped pacing and sat on the coffee table so that he was right in front of her. "But there's never been any proof, nobody has ever seen it or heard it or anything?"

"No." Adalind looked at him, "I don't think Grimms would have advertised something like that. Why are you asking me all this and what does this have to do with us?"

Nick reached into his pocket and pulled out the folded parchment. "I found this the night the trailer was burned. It was shoved into the book so hard that the spine was cracked."

Adalind took the paper and unfolded it. "Oh my God."

"Yeah, that was kind of my reaction too, look at the writing under the drawing."

"It's too small, I can't make it out," she said looking between the drawing and Nick. "You look identical."

"Killed defending his Hexenbiest bride." Nick recited.

"But he was a Grimm." Adalind said handing back the drawing.

"I know and I have the feeling Juliette found out about this."

"Do you think Kenneth told her and she went looking for it? You think this was why she burned the trailer?"

"It couldn't have helped. He told her about the baby and she helped him set up my mother."

"Nick, that means that the royals know that I'm pregnant and that this is your baby."

"I know."

"What are we going to do?" she asked so scared that he actually sat on the couch and pulled her into his arms and she willingly went.

"I don't know but I think it's time we went to Vienna."

Adalind clutched his shirt tighter. "What if they try to take me and the baby. Would you come for me?"

"Yes but they won't. Besides this could be how we get back Diana."

Adalind pulled away from him, "just this once, can you stay here with me?"

"I'll stay."

"Why?"

"Because, maybe I was meant to."


End file.
